


The Blindfold

by salutationtothestars



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Blindfolds, Canon Compliant, Dramatic Irony, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Implied Sexual Content, Light Bondage, M/M, No Spoilers, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-Canon, Tags May Change, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 11:43:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10019141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salutationtothestars/pseuds/salutationtothestars
Summary: The fabric turns out to be silk, and a little warm already from the heat of Gladio’s hands. At a gentle, wordless prompting, Ignis lifts his head and waits for those same hands to finish the simple knot that will keep the blindfold in place.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter was designed to take place somewhere around (or after) the same time as the flashback in Ignis's episode of Brotherhood, so less than approximately two years before the game begins. Thus far, there are no spoilers for the game. This will change, but the rating probably won't. Tags will update as chapters progress.

They try it, once.

It’s still early days, when they’re pretending to be together just for the sake of physical release. Gladiolus claims he’s hit a dry streak, although he passes up several opportunities to see other people without much fuss. He also claims Ignis needs the stress relief, offering something like training but with a little extra kick for the days that wear on him most. Ignis, taken in by the way his teeth glint wolfishly when he smiles, goes along with it. The future king’s sworn shield is handsome, and surprisingly gentle if he wants to be. It’s enough, for a temporary arrangement.

Of course, the fluttering in his chest when Gladio puts a hand at the small of his back has nothing to do with it. He resents the idea that their open-mouthed kisses excite him less than the soft, gentle ones that come after they’re spent. There are more important things to worry about. There always will be.

In any case, Gladio brings up the idea of the blindfold while they’re sitting on his couch, platonically enjoying each other’s company. He’s already tied Ignis up a few times, which they both enjoyed. It isn’t much different, just another way of playing with the idea of rescinding control. That’s his argument, anyway. Ignis feels thrown enough that he would bring this up outside a bedroom, outside the only space he feels comfortable indulging in that kind of attention. To his credit, Gladio does not tease him for the flush he can feel spreading on his cheeks. He waits, sipping from a beer can like it’s a glass of expensive wine. The book he’s been reading sits open on his lap, one finger between the pages to mark his place.

“I would… need time to consider,” Ignis says, hoping he sounds dignified and composed. “If that’s amenable.”

“Sure,” Gladio replies. “It’s just been on my mind, that’s all. Take as much time as you want.”

With that, he sets down the beer can and goes back to his book. Ignis has a harder time regaining his concentration. One line in the report he’s been given for study requires several passes before he absorbs its meaning. That embarrasses him nearly as much as the flippant way Gladio implied Ignis has been ‘on his mind.’

He leaves early. Gladio bids him goodnight as if nothing has changed, and promises to see him when he comes to pick Noctis up after their drills.

A week later, Ignis sprawls across the mattress, eyeing the strip of fabric in Gladio’s hands with what he hopes is well-masked apprehension. His shirt is gone, glasses placed in a drawer on the nightstand, and his hands are bound loosely around one bedpost. A spot on his chest is already blossoming into a bruise, where Gladio had sucked a mark earlier. He’s very careful, nothing in places that would be evident – that’s one of Ignis’s rules. Maintaining an aura of respectability is a crucial part of his role, after all, and what would Noct think, if he noticed? Or His Majesty, the gods forbid?

Gladio has the freedom to care less. He wears a matching spot high on his neck.

“Are you sure?” he asks again, coming closer. The hair on Ignis’s arms stands on end at the increasing proximity.

“Yes,” he says, croaking the word past a dry tongue in a dryer mouth. He’s nervous, but he is still sure. None of Gladio’s ideas have been wrong yet, and a part of him aches at the amount of trust this act engenders.

Leaning down, Gladio steadies himself with one hand on the bed and presses a quick kiss to Ignis’s lips. When he pulls back, his face is still so close that they share breath. Their noses graze as Ignis swallows, involuntarily. “Close your eyes.”

The fabric turns out to be silk, and a little warm already from the heat of Gladio’s hands. At a gentle, wordless prompting, Ignis lifts his head and waits for those same hands to finish the simple knot that will keep the blindfold in place. It feels snug rather than tight, a distinction that surprises him. In any case, there’s no way he’ll forget that it’s there. Perhaps that’s part of the point.

When Gladio takes his hands away, Ignis opens his eyes. Everything is black. His heart seems to skip a beat, jumping uncomfortably in his chest.

“Okay?”

The nearby sound of his friend’s voice is an immediate relief. For all his senses can tell him, he’s utterly alone, adrift in an endless sea of darkness. That isn’t the case, and he knows it. Gladio would never leave him like this. Still, he’s built his life relying on hard evidence to prove facts. Their absence is more than a little disconcerting.

He nods.

A finger touches his torso, resting lightly on the skin over his ribs. Before Ignis can stop himself, he starts, jerking away from the unexpected sensation.

“Sorry,” he says, settling back into the bed. “You surprised me.”

Gladio laughs, and splays both hands flat below his pecs. One of his thumbs swirls slow, grounding circles. “That’s the idea, yeah.”

As his eyes adjust, Ignis begins to get an impression of light. It isn’t enough to see by, or to get more than an impression of what’s directly in front of him. Somehow, this makes the tangled feeling in his stomach worse. Tensing his muscles, he gives the tie around his wrists a subtle pull, just to see if it will give with enough force. Gladio either doesn’t notice or mistakes it for earnest desire, a craving for more. His big, rough hands disappear again. Ignis’s breathing quickens.

Is it a hunger for more that’s affecting him this potently? Nothing they’ve done has ever felt quite as charged, so much like he balances on the edge of a knife. He extensively researched sensory deprivation and its connection to sex before agreeing, of course; he knows a strong reaction to the removal of his sight is to be expected. Even so, he hadn’t anticipated this… dread.

Give it more time, he tells himself. Trust Gladiolus. He trusts Gladiolus.

The hands, disembodied without a voice to accompany them, settle around Ignis’s hips. Fingers hook into his trousers and start the agonizing process of dragging them down.

He speaks before he thinks.

“Stop.”

Gladio immediately removes his hands. “What’s up, Iggy? You hurt? Want me to back off?” he asks, genuine concern in his tone. Ignis expects nothing less, and usually admires him for so appropriately respecting his boundaries. In the moment, though, he doesn’t want these boundaries. He wants Gladio’s touch to anchor him, his voice to reassure him… but that’s not it, either. What Ignis wants is his autonomy back. He wants his sight.

“I’m fine,” he promises, knowing it will be true in a moment. “Take it off, please.”

As Gladio works at the blindfold, careful to keep any skin-to-skin contact brief, Ignis applies a carefully measured amount of pressure against the knots keeping him in bed. It doesn’t take much. Within a few seconds, his arms are free, and his third-oldest tie falls in the crack between the mattress and the headboard. Then, he can see again. He squints against the light, blinking a few times.

Gladio gazes down at him, brow furrowed. “Hey,” he says. His hands are in his lap, fists clenched around the blindfold. “I would have untied that for you.”

“No matter,” Ignis says, hefting into a sitting position. Drinking in his surroundings gladly seems a little too dramatic, as he’d only been blindfolded for less than five minutes. He casually observes, instead, focusing in on the twist of Gladio’s mouth as he frowns.

“I’m sorry, Iggy. I thought you’d like it.”

Gladio apologizes easily, when it’s warranted. It’s something Ignis likes about him. To the uneducated, he appears to be little more than a musclebound brute. Anyone who listens to the way he affectionately teases Noct, who watches him spend hours buried in his books, or pays attention to the love he has for his family knows better.

“It isn’t your fault. I… didn’t give it much of a chance…”

Gladio shrugs. “If it’s not your thing, it’s not your thing. Pushing it won’t help.”

“Perhaps if we tried at a later date?”

“Nah. It was more for you than me, anyway. I’m not broken up about not doing it again.” He pauses, looking Ignis up and down as if checking for injuries. Ignis doesn’t think he can get hard, now, a hint of panic still receding from the outskirts of his mind. Something inside him clenches anyway. “What do you need?” Gladio asks, too soft.

Ignis resists the urge to ask for renewed closeness, for those fingers to come back and smooth across his skin. Too intimate, too much like revealing his hand. There are more important things.

“A glass of water would be appreciated,” he says, getting to his feet. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

Gladio stands, too, and walks across the room to retrieve his shirt. Along the way, he drops the blindfold into a bin, seemingly without considering it at all. Mightn’t he want that for another partner? Surely he could find someone else more adventurous than Ignis, any time he pleases. Their situation will hardly last forever.

“Of course it’s no trouble,” he says, bending to pick up Ignis’s shirt and toss it his way. “You hungry, too?”

In-between grocery deliveries, all Gladio has is Cup Noodles. Ignis is not hungry enough for that.

Having blocked more time in his schedule than he’s using for its intended purpose, Ignis waffles over what to do with his unexpected free hour. There are countless matters in the palace that could use his attention. Undoubtedly, Noctis’s apartment is a mess again, barely a week after its last deep-clean.

“If you’re sticking around,” Gladio mumbles around a mouthful of noodles, “my morning’s free. There’s a documentary I’ve been saving we could watch.”

Ignis compromises with his relentless need to be busy by taking care of several issues with his phone, skimming emails and typing quick responses to often unnecessary questions. During the lull between little fires he seems to be continuously putting out, he leans back against the couch and stares at the television. He lost thread of the plot nearly five minutes in, but it doesn’t matter. Arm draped along the cushions, Gladio’s hand rests on the knob at the top of Ignis’s spine. The touch is firm without being insistent – purposeful.

One thumb digs concentric circles into his skin.

It isn’t long after that Ignis admits to himself there are deeper feelings there, feelings not entirely suited even to friends with whom one relieves stress. They’re inappropriate, he knows, just the way his dalliances with Gladiolus themselves are inappropriate. He is allotted some semblance of a personal life, of course, even Gladio’s father was given the leeway to marry and raise children. The likelihood that anyone would begrudge him a little happiness is slim, so long as his devotion to Noctis remains his priority.

Sleeping with Noctis’s sworn shield takes the legs out from under that argument, without question.

As a consequence, he avoids Gladio for several weeks. This means no weapons training, which does throw a bit of a wrench in his schedule so far as fitness goes. The first seven days, he thinks little of it, already burying himself in so many activities it’s easy to ignore the ones he’s stopped permitting himself. After that, he’s desperate for some kind of exercise. When Noctis’s school friend, Prompto, decides to go for a quick run while the prince naps off a particularly stressful day, Ignis asks if he can join him. It isn’t his preferred workout, but it gets him out of the palace, and Prompto’s cheerful greetings to all the people they pass lift his spirits.

It isn’t enough, even so. Ignis misses the way his muscles burn after a hard training session, the exhilaration of sparring, and the satisfaction in improving himself so he can protect his sovereign. There are other things, too, that he misses. Most of all, he wants Gladio’s company again. Having someone with whom to share the burden of duty had been helping him immensely, which was good for his work ethic.

He has a thousand excuses. They give him the leeway to visit the training grounds again, eighteen days after he decided to stop going. It’s no surprise to find Gladio there; he knows his routine, too, out of habit. Shirt and cap discarded, Gladio hefts his greatsword and gives it several practice swings before he brings it down. The practice dummy he faces is easily cleft in two halves, exploding in a riot of straw.

He sees Ignis, then. Ignis’s stomach lurches.

“Hey, Specs,” Gladio says, easing out of his warrior’s stance. “Haven’t seen you in a while. Missed having you around.”

“Yes, well,” Ignis says to stall for time, fiddling with his glasses. “My apologies. I had some… business to take care of. Thinking to do.”

Gladio hums. Leaving his sword propped against the wall, he picks up a towel and mops sweat from his eyes as he walks over. He does not, Ignis notices, reach for his clothing. The tattooed bird on his shoulders and back is continuing its slow crawl down his arms, several feathers at a time. Ignis can discern the new pinions from the old by the way they shine, still a little red but near the end of their healing process. His hair is getting long, too. It’s pulled into a short ponytail, a few strands escaped during his exertion to brush the shaved sides of his head.

“Thinking, huh?” he says. “That brain never stops, does it. You reach a verdict on whatever you were thinking about?”

It’s Gladio’s grin that finally does him in. There’s nothing predatory about it, or affectated – it’s affectionate, instead, fond. It bypasses the pit of Ignis’s stomach and swims right up to cloud his mind, leaving him nearly dizzy. For the first time, he considers he might not be the only one suffering from hopelessly romantic sensibilities. How very stupid of him.

“Yes,” Ignis replies, a little belatedly. “I have.”

“Is it good news, or bad?”

Ignis doesn’t smile often in mixed company, too embarrassed by the way his mouth skews sideways and his eyes reflexively squint. He doesn’t think about that now. “Good,” he says.

As his response, Gladio bends down and kisses him. The contact is mercifully short, the possibility of discovery in so open a place never far from Ignis’s mind. Even so, there’s a passion behind it – a swell waiting to be discovered. It’s enough, for a start. “Good,” Gladio repeats. “Come on and spar with me. Bet you’re dying for a real challenge.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> My plans are to carry this fic in two more chapters to the end of the game. So far as the biggest plot points go, it will strictly remain canon compliant. Warnings both spoiler and otherwise will be updated as needed.


End file.
